Blue Bulbs

You threw missiles at me

as if you were a Gazan

and I an Israeli farmer

in my chicken house

lit by blue bulbs

stuffing live chickens into cages

in the dead of night

So this is what we have come to

You took over my life, you cried

You took everything that was mine and made it yours

and now a two-country solution is impossible

You enclosed my soul with cinder blocks

You built walls, erected barbed wire fences

between my past and my future

You want to drive me into the sea, I replied

You deny my right to exist

I’m lost in a narrow cobbled street in the marketplace

and filthy merchants feel my breasts

on the pretext of selling me dresses with bangles

My voice is a flute that no one hears

No, your voice is like gravel, I say,

and I will use it to pave roads through

this settlement

— Mitchell Grabois